I can't even begin to tell you when it was that my screams faded to nothing. At some undefined point, my hands stopped shaking, my breath steadied, and the panic that had clawed at my throat turned into something else. Something unnatural. Something I couldn't explain.
She was dead. I knew that. I screamed for help, yelled until my voice cracked, until my throat burned. But my heart...my heart didn't feel it. Not the way it should have. Not the way a normal person would.
The apartment was lit by shadows, the dim bulb in the ceiling humming like a dying insect trapped inside it. The air was thick and stale. I walked slowly across the cold wooden floor, hesitant, placing one foot in front of the other as I moved toward her.
"Hey, girl."
Her body lay sprawled across the couch, motionless yet disturbingly lifelike, her eyes wide open and fixed toward the river outside. It felt as though even in death she wanted to drift forward like that water below, endlessly moving, endlessly chasing something just out of reach. But something had held her back, an invisible force freezing her in place, trapping her between what was and what could have been.
I swallowed hard.
There should have been more. Sadness. Fear. Anger. Something. But there wasn't. There was only that hollow, gnawing emptiness inside me, like someone had scooped out my chest and left nothing behind. I hated it.
Then the sirens came.
"Sir, step back."
An officer in uniform pushed me aside as the apartment began to fill with cops and paramedics. Red and blue lights flashed through the windows, casting warped shadows along the walls.
Detective Rowan crouched beside Layla's body. He was middle‑aged, gray threading through his temples, his sharp eyes scanning every detail with cold precision.
"No signs of struggle. No forced entry," he muttered. "Interesting."
"She was fine," I blurted out. "Earlier today. She was fine."
"And you were the first to find her?" Rowan's gaze shifted to me. "What were you doing before that?"
I hesitated. "I was out. Running some errands. When I came back, she was already—"
"Dead," he finished calmly. "No blood. No bruises. Yet here she is."
Silence stretched between us until another officer spoke from behind.
"Detective, preliminary report from the coroner."
Rowan took the clipboard and scanned it. Something flickered across his expression. Dark. His grip tightened.
"Air embolism," he muttered.
My stomach twisted. "What?"
"Whoever killed her knew exactly what they were doing," Rowan said, standing. "An injection of air directly into a vein. Lethal. Subtle. Almost no trace. A slow death." He paused, eyes drifting back to the body. "But one thing bothers me. Why didn't she go to the hospital? It's as if she knew she was dying and chose to do nothing."
I stared at her. The pieces in my head shifted, rearranged themselves, but still refused to fit.
"Who would do this?" I whispered.
"That's what we're here to find out," Rowan replied, watching me closely. "If you want to help, tell me everything. Every detail. No matter how small."
I nodded, though deep down I felt like I was already trapped in something I couldn't escape.
Hours passed. My alibi checked out, but suspicion lingered. The murderer had to be someone close to Krivya. Someone she trusted. Someone who could get near her without raising alarm.
The strange thing was, I only learned her name after the police told me.
And as much as I wanted to deny it, that still included me.
The whispers started soon after.
The officers. The neighbors. Even the barista at the café I always visited. Everyone looked at me differently, like they knew something I didn't.
"Poor girl," Mrs. Caldwell from 4B whispered to another tenant. "And to think he was the one who found her."
"They always say it's someone you know," the other replied. "Someone close."
My fists clenched. The walls seemed to press inward. The apartment felt smaller, tighter, suffocating. The place I called home was turning into a prison.
Then the messages began.
Anonymous texts at first.
"You don't remember, do you?"
"It was always meant to happen."
"You're not as innocent as you think."
Then came the calls. A voice distorted by static.
"She trusted you."
Click.
Panic clawed at my throat again, but the hollowness stayed. My emotions felt disconnected, like they belonged to someone else. I couldn't tell if it was shock, trauma, or something far worse.
I began questioning everything. My memories. My mind.
Had I really found her body?
Had I really been screaming for help, or was that just something I told myself?
"I'm looking for answers," I told Rowan the next day. "Someone's trying to mess with me. Something isn't right."
He studied me for a long moment, then slid something across the table.
A photograph.
A security camera still from a building near my apartment.
The timestamp showed the exact moment of Krivya's murder.
And the image—
Me.
Standing beside her on the bridge.
Watching. Waiting.
Smiling.
Except the person in that photograph wasn't the me I recognized.
Eryx.